More than 70 percent of Taiwanese — regardless of their political preference — think that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will win next year’s presidential election and that the party might win more than 50 percent of the seats in the legislative polls, a recent Taiwan Thinktank survey has found.
Following the DPP’s significant gains in the nine-in-one elections in November last year and the party’s strong showing in the by-elections on Saturday last week — when it held onto its three seats while seeing a major growth in votes received — more than 75.6 percent of respondents said that they are convinced that there will be a transition of power after next year’s presidential election, think tank deputy executive director Lai I-chung (賴怡忠) told a news conference in Taipei.
“Taking a closer look at the numbers, it is surprising that as many as 74.9 percent of pan-blue supporters also believe that there will be a shift of power next year,” he said.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
The poll found that 37.6 percent of respondents would vote for a DPP presidential candidate, 20.8 percent would support the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) nominee and 12.4 percent said they would vote for an independent candidate.
As for the leaders of the two major parties, 52.7 percent of respondents said they are satisfied with New Taipei Mayor Eric Chu’s (朱立倫) performance as KMT chairman against 26.7 percent who are not.
DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) performance was deemed satisfactory by 63 percent of respondents against 20.7 percent who were unhappy with her, the poll found.
Tsai is seen as the most likely to win the DPP’s presidential nomination.
Regarding potential KMT challengers, 39 percent of respondents said that they would like to see Chu run for president, while 35 percent preferred Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), the poll found.
If Chu does not run — and he has said he will not — 56.3 percent of respondents said they would support Wang, while former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) and Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) were supported by 16.7 percent and 10.8 percent respectively.
Regarding the legislative elections, 51.8 percent of respondents think the DPP is likely to win more than half of the seats, 31.2 percent said they would vote for DPP candidates and 18.5 percent said they would support KMT candidates.
“More than 70 percent of those polled — regardless of their political preference — believe that there will be a transition of power next year. This shows that the majority of the public is ready for it,” Soochow University associate professor Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said at yesterday’s news conference. “However, the DPP must be cautious because 30 percent of the public is still undecided on which party to support in the legislative elections.”
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